For "words with wings", it is but a short flight from pain to patient. Penes, ponos, poros, passibilis in Greek and Latin or papman in Sanskrit are fused in "patient" to convey the idea of "he who endures patiently" much pain, misfortune, penury, harm, suffering and punishment.

Patients enduring pain feel drained.

Except for the complexities inherent in "passio" or passion, there would not be much more to say. "Passio" is, in a manner of speaking, the "will to live" or the "vital spirit" which also propels sexuality, love, attachments and much more. In "passio", the ancients recognized a human blessing and a curse. "Passio", while on one hand it fires perceptions of beauty and kindles love, on the other hand it can obliterate reason. "Passio" can cause feelings of imperative urgency and confusing behaviors as is the case with love-hate relationships that may end in "crimes of passion". In Dionysus, better known to us as Bacchus, the ancients present human "passio" as the "nature" of man. After Christianity, the leaning is to show Bacchus mostly in negative overtones as it is implicit in bacchanalia. Nonetheless, Bacchus still is king of carnival and Mardis Gras, when celebrants find an outlet for their "passio". To this theme, some ancient poets added Eros, who as a child of "Pen-ia" who stood for "pen-ury". Because of his unquenchable desires which when consummated led to greater insatiable appetites for orgiastic orgasmic affairs. Eros was never happy only when Eros matured and became capable of loving another - she is known to us as Psyche - he found bliss. Thus, it was clear to the ancients that debaucheries, ORGies and the pursuit of ORGasms often destroy those with disORGanized underdeveloped psyches. By placing the ability of a psyche for true love for another, particularly a child, as the central feature of an adulthood psyche, is perhaps the most brilliant, beautiful, touching and critical legacy that ancient humanists recorded in western mythology.

Illnesses, as clinicians should know, weaken the "passio" or vital vigor the French call "elan". Clinicians should remember Pandora, who followed Prometheus. Like Eve, she ushered pestilence and pain, a punishment of mortals for having acquired knowledge. But it was not for extermination which was prevented by an antidote called hope, a medical recipe Sustaining the "will to live". Pandora retained hope in her box which we could call matrix, uterus and clinicians, the essence of "the art of Medicine".

Immature psyches are prime victims of passions

Patients have sense, are scient, seek science, grant consent and have a conscience burdened by illness, which a compassionate clinician must conciliate. Currently, the terms "clinician" and "patient" are being replaced by "health care provider" and "client". Such shift implies the substitution of established medical ethics and "Primum non nocere" ("First do no harm") by mercantile standards implicit in "caviat emptor" (consumer be aware). Aesculapius, the deity of healing is being replaced by Hermes or Mercury, the deity of merchants and thiefs. Currently many "health care" corporations have amassed large fortunes along with evidence that the "passio" of patients and multitudes of those without access to health care are causing impatience. Hightened levels of public "passio" may become are obstacle to resolving the dilemma of health care for profit being increasingly discordant with public health. One symptom is that dramatic advances in scientific medicine have not impacted public perceptions of "not being cared for".